We honored Martin Luther King and his legacy, especially in this tumultuous year of protests and heightened awareness of racial inequality through the Black Lives Matter movement and race based election obstruction issues and the racial tilting of COVID victims. We shared some inspiring quotes of his, relevant and hopeful. We also talked also about how even though it was a “three day weekend” most of us felt as if it was not, every day being Blursday still. And we meandered into our typical topics, mostly COVID and the vaccines. Many of us expressed concern about getting our parents vaccinated and how hard it is now to find a vaccination site and to figure out how to get an appointment for it. We worried about different people’s risk tolerance, We noted the news was again filled with reports of how people who seemingly protected themselves picked up the virus, one at a New Year’s Eve party who since passed, in less than three weeks, which is horrifying. We involved our doctors on the call to weigh in on their opinions about the different vaccines from Pfizer, J&J, Moderna & AstroZeneca. We wondered about the reports of corruption in the distribution of the vaccine, how Canadians and South Americans are flocking to Florida to get it. Now, our Florida resident reports, you need evidence that you live in Florida to get it. There aren’t enough people to vaccinate people, and we hear in the UK they are asking flight attendants to do it. Someone who had luck in finding out how to get vaccinated in the City shared her advice. And we talked about the new recommendations to double mask. To lighten the mood we then touched on commercials we remembered from past years, and documentaries we’d seen. The rhythm of these calls has always seemed to involve “breaks” from when things get too tense, someone steps up to create the air between heaviness.
Finally we got to the elephant in the room, the upcoming Inauguration of President Biden and our concerns about the safety of the event. Reports were there were more troops in Washington, DC than there were in Afghanistan and Iran combined in preparation for anything. We worried about how Trump had too much free reign to pardon people and who he was going to set on us again within the three days he had remaining. The anxiety from the last four years exacerbated the recent attack on the Capitol and COVID and our concern for the 20th was palpable, even if not fully expressed. On this evening when we remembered MLK’s urging for peace and equality, there was both an irony and an offered optimism.
